in
the soviet society, great changes occurred in the two postwar
generations, with the move to the cities and the rise of educational
levels and standards of living. by the late 1980s, a new russian
urban culture had formed, founded on a large professional class,
largely free of ideology and potentially supportive of liberal
political values. in the economy, powerful interest groups had
emerged that increasingly vied with the party bodies for control
over policy in their area. in the republics and regions, local
administrative and intellectual elites had substantially increased
their political weight and cultural autonomy. the country was in
need of western-type democratic structures and new economic patterns
that would be capable of channeling and accommodating the new
interests and creating conditions for the forces of modernity to
develop further.
however, despite some modifications to the soviet political and
economic systems following stalin抯 departure and spanning the
period of thirty years until the advent of gorbachev, the
fundamental nature of the regime remained practically unchanged. the
party-state continued to claim a monopoly on power and strove to
control the entire sociopolitical order.
by
the end of gorbachev抯 perestroika, the regime抯 unreformability had
become patently obvious. it proved incapable of providing leadership
during the period of a radical transformation of the existing social
relations, political structures, and ideological doctrines. the
system of centralized planning proved inadequate for a modern
economy. mounting economic problems pushed the republics toward
secession, bringing local elites and populations to the conviction
that only by freeing themselves from the failed and seemingly
unreformable system would they be able to find a way out of the
soviet impasse. as a result, in 1991 the soviet authoritarian
regime, like its autocratic predecessor in 1917, collapsed like a
house of cards.
